Friday, December 18, 2015

Review: Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch

It’s been three months since the Winterians were freed and Spring’s king, Angra, disappeared—thanks largely to the help of Cordell.

Meira just wants her people to be safe. When Cordellan debt forces the Winterians to dig their mines for payment, they unearth something powerful and possibly dangerous: Primoria’s lost chasm of magic. Theron sees this find as an opportunity—with this much magic, the world can finally stand against threats like Angra. But Meira fears the danger the chasm poses—the last time the world had access to so much magic, it spawned the Decay. So when the king of Cordell orders the two on a mission across the kingdoms of Primoria to discover the chasm’s secrets, Meira plans to use the trip to garner support to keep the chasm shut and Winter safe—even if it means clashing with Theron. But can she do so without endangering the people she loves?
Mather just wants to be free. The horrors inflicted on the Winterians hang fresh and raw in Januari—leaving Winter vulnerable to Cordell’s growing oppression. When Meira leaves to search for allies, he decides to take Winter’s security into his own hands. Can he rebuild his broken kingdom and protect them from new threats?
As the web of power and deception weaves tighter, Theron fights for magic, Mather fights for freedom—and Meira starts to wonder if she should be fighting not just for Winter, but for the world.

In the last book, Meira discovered that she was the true Queen of Winter, kicked a villain in the nads, saved her kingdom, and found love.
So what's next for these characters?! And more importantly, did this book live up to the hype I had built up in my head, after stalking this book for half a year?

Ehhhh.Not really.

I was pretty excited to read this, because I enjoyed the first book, Snow Like Ashes, quite a bit. Now, I couldn't exactly remember what all happened in that one, but I was confident that it would be ok. There was a love triangle that I thought was cool (<--you read that right), and I wanted to see how it all played out. So I jumped in, and assumed it would be just fine!

For the most part it was, but I think it would have been better if I had done a reread, because this isn't a book that had a whole lotta re-cap happening in it. Anyway, it took me a while to get my bearings.That's my fault. Should have skimmed over the first book.
But. Even so, I thought the plot was pretty sloooooow and draggy.

Unfortunately, not a lot happens action-wise. It's mostly a bunch of Meira's inner dialogue, as she tries to figure out what to do. Which menas there's a lot of wishy-washy blah, blah, blah stuff happening in her head, and not a lot of kickassery.

And the Trianglethat I thoughtwasn't anymore I was so interested in? Bleh.
I think Raasch tried to be creative, but I can't say I'm all that intrigued anymore. The whole romance angle just felt off to me. I'm not saying I hated it, but there was definitely a What-the-What?! vibe to it. I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't read this yet, but, I didn't like the switcheroo that the author pulled. It was very...Gotcha! And not in a good way, in my opinion.

I'm still planning on reading the next book, so it's not like this was torturous to read or anything. I suppose my reaction to this installment was more mild disappointment than anything else.

Hopefully, the Winter Queen will pull her head out of her ass for the next book. It's not fun (to me) to read about silly internal conflicts that seem to loop around like nonsense. Then again, maybe this is a transition novel, and she'll have it all figured out by book three?

1 comments:

Hopefully you will like the next book better than this one. I've been looking at this series, but avoiding it because I'm very picky about YA. I will read it, but I'm so picky. Maybe, not sure if this series is for me or not.